critique my music please!

Hello,
Please visit http://www.synthesizedsounds.com and download the music samples. This is my website and I would appreciate some advice about the quality of music before I start soliciting companies. Thanks to the community for your help.

I like gift of heaven.
I dislike the melody of power struggle... well not so much the melody as much as the sound of that annoying horn.
ecoheroes18 is pretty weak as far as techno. about halfway through I would focus on bringing out the moving part and make it louder than that annoying ripping type sound.
ecoheroes17 has an an interesting sound to it. one thing I kept wishing is that each of of the notes be more well defined. more stacato and such.. not the inital sounds, but more the overall sound. It is really begging for a beat.

I think you should improve your homepage area where the links are. On my system, the test seems to be all stuck together. Also, perhaps next to each download, write the file size and a small snippet of what the music is about.

ecoheroes17.mp3 seems to get a little muddy in the middle. (Sometimes less is more)
ecoheroes18.mp3 is nice. After 25 percent into the cong, it would have been cool to put a little dramatic pause with just one instrument and then build fast into more complex
powerstruggle.mp3 is the best

I'm gonna make a few suggestions, don't take this the wrong way, this is simply constructive critism and suggestions.

You should aim to refine your reverbs since every instrument sounds like the same reverb. Also in Orchestra 1 you might wanna consider mixing the the drums to both speakers. General popular music theory places drum tracks heavily on both speakers since it sounds more natural. Also it sounds like on your symphonic tracks you're limited to too few instruments. Its a good idea to mix in woodwinds (without over emphasing) and keep the string essembles for chords and tones and use solo strings for leads. You tend to loss that heavy "Midi" sound as you start to do this more.

Thanks to all for the great advice! I appreciate the help from this community... rock on.
I am using a standard midi notation program to send signals to 2 stand alone synths. I feed that signal into a computer and record it live, then mix and convert it if necessary. I am experimenting with how I can get the best natural sound from my synths, and I am still working on that Thanks again guys, and I do appreciate it!

Ah, you might wanna invest in some form of a sample bank or soft sampler or otherwise if you'd like to persue non-electronica forms of music, hence classic inspired. Reason is a great app really for most people and features a pretty nice base soundbank, great to expand on. I've pulled instrument samples of AKAI CDs and patched them myself so I have more diversity.

With a soft sampler, you'd be able to load samples at free will and you'd have soundbank at your finger tips you could combine with your two synths you have as of now.

First off, my criticism is not here to insult or hurt you. I'm trying give advice on what you could improve on. If you don't like my advice, don't take it. I don't mind.

Orchestral 1 sounds okay. It seems like the instruments are fighting to be heard. You might want to change the notes one of the instruments are playing or lose an instrument completely. Do keep the drums.

Orchestral 2 was okay. It was the switching from drums to no drums that annoyed me. It wasn't gradual and way too noticeable.

Your regular Techno isn't the kind of techno I look for. Keep those beats though. Spend less time doing the beats for the intro. Add some less repetive sounds that keeps people pumped up. The non beat repetition that enters near 1/3 of the way isn't working. It dies off and comes back. Keep it alive and energetic. And as you go through the song, change some of the background sounds with some other sounds. Now, if it was more of a deeper and darker mood, I'd keep those sounds but change the beat and background noise. Basically the beat and mood being created contradicts each other. Check out Reanimation by Linkin Park. It's a remix of Hybrid Theory, so it'll be music you might be familiar with, but it has lots of techno and synthesized sounds thrown into the old songs, and it sounds great. A nice example to look at.

The Ambient Techno reminded me of a SimCity 3000 song. Nice and subtle. Enjoyable. Work with more ambient techno and let's see more demos of that.

My final verdict is you need to work on how to put use beats and drums for techno. Set the mood right and use the proper instruments for those moods in most of these songs. But nice work. Really. You've gotten farther than me. I have yet to finish one complete song!

Great to hear you are going to start marketing your self to game companies.

First up I would research other game composers' work and play their stuff next to your own. This will help you get a sense of where your music is stronger or weaker sounding in comparison.
Use these comparisons to work on your own music and get a handle on important aspects like melody , dynamics, and mixing(production) as used by the sucessful game composers.

With regards to the music demos on your site I have this to say:
1. Gift of Heaven : Nice overall - drums sound a little wierd. Timp rolls are not quite right sometimes. Crashes need to be better - they're a bit obviously sampled. A dash of reverb to make them sit further back would be nice. Don't use reverb on the whole track, use diffeent reverbs for certain elements (Drums, strings, horns) if you can. The ending seems to fall apart to my ears because of a certain downward motion you start just before the end. There is a little gap in the melody that seems out of place. Personally I think you should raise that sucker up and give a big crescendo at the end.

2. Powerstruggle : Great drum intro, the horns/woodwind sound weak or is it that the samples aren't defined enough? The intro cluster of instruments sounds a little 'off' to me. The biggest thing is that the track doesn't seem to say anything - is it happy, sad, action, tension? Is it for a FPS game or an RTS game? Hard to tell. I think this track needs more work. Perhaps set yourself a project like -"Create a 30 second orchestral piece for an imaginary Soldier of Fortune-style FPS game, for the battle sequence."

3. Ecoheroes18 : Good intro again, but this tune lacks a certain punch - are you using compression on anything? You should really get compression on that kick to help move the track along. Limiting or compression of the overall mix would also help. As Greg mentioned, add more instruments.

4. Ecoheroes17 : I think this intro could be more ambient - try to use panning effects, autopanning, filter panning are all good ways to get movement in the sound. Also instead of (or as well as) fading out try using filter sweeps to create a sense of movement. More reverb on some elements can help create a more ambient feel as well.

It's a good start - but I think the tracks could all do with more work.

devildog, I would recommend "Dance Music" for Cubase. It used an ancient version of Cubase but I think you can pick up the ideas and suit them to any apps. Look in Amazon. I also have another book on MIDI, but can't recall the name. It gives VERY good advice on making MIDI music "more" alive. Perhaps it is called the "MIDI Files"???

Another book is Home Recording. It teaches about mixing, compressing, etc.

I'm VERY glad to see more music talk here. I just may post some "music" I made if my arm is twisted enough.

If I knew we had enough music people here, I would love to run a contest. Something like, create any number of songs for the following categories, but they must be under XX minutes. Winners get goodies and allow iDG to offer the finished songs to the community (of course the artist gets credit if any devs use their music.) A nice win-win.

Himiona,
I've listened to your track and I find it to be technically flawless. You use several effects and the balances are right on the two different speaker setups I heard it through. Your methods in that area are clearly refined and polished. The music itself is fitting in many situations.... and you say it is for a sports game menu. In that case I found your music to be relaxing, especially the piano voice about halfway through. I could envision a slowly paced part of the game using this music. So if it somehow relates to that, then it fits. I can't picture a sport to it.... and if there is one voice that is out of place I would say the piano voice. Most menu's don't sit for more than a minute and I would put the hard guitar closer to the beginning. But these are nitpicks for the sake of criticism...and I had to dig to come up with them.

Camacho ,
I would enjoy that and I think its a good idea. I would certainly partake in such a contest for the sole sake of the community. If no one else can tell, I haven't polished my techniques to the level Himiniona has... hence the purpose of my initial topic. A contest would be beneficial to musicians in my opinion. Your many responses have given me good insight into areas I can improve. I appreciate it fellas.